Sheriff Pushes for More Dispatchers

Unless the Board of Supervisors responds to an “absolutely critical” need to double the staff of dispatch operators at the Sheriff’s Department, San Diego County residents can expect a slower response when they report an emergency or request a deputy’s help, Sheriff John Duffy said last week.

“An average wait of 58 seconds to get a human voice on the telephone is not acceptable,” Duffy said, adding that answering time for 911 emergency calls has quadrupled, taking 4 to 5 seconds instead of 1 second.

Bill Kahn, coordinator of the Sheriff’s Communication Center, sketched a more dire picture.

“The bottom line is some day, somebody is going to die, or get badly hurt, and everyone’s going to wonder why.”

Rapid growth throughout the county has prompted many more emergency calls and crime reports in the past three years, Kahn said. The communications center in Mira Mesa receives the calls and dispatches deputies to crime scenes. The sheriff has been asking supervisors to increase his dispatch staff since 1985.

Duffy promised to pull 38 deputies from duty to answer the telephones if supervisors don’t grant him the money he needs to hire full-time dispatchers. The deputies would be removed from special units including the vice squad and street narcotics division. Deputies earn more money than dispatchers.

“If the county wants to spend more money to answer the phones, then that’s their problem,” Duffy said.

The Sheriff’s Department now employs 58 full-time operators, 47 of them women, who earn $9.64 to $12.01 an hour. Full-time dispatchers must work at least four hours overtime a week because of understaffing, Kahn said.

Ironically, the county recently issued a report stating that the dispatch staff needs 38 more operators. However, Chief Administrative Officer Norm Hickey has recommended hiring only 14 operators for six months at a cost of $141,000.

Duffy, who will go before the board Tuesday with his budget requests, wants to hire 33 full-time operators for one year at a cost of $727,000.

During a press conference last week, Duffy claimed that the public wants money spent on law enforcement before social services. The sheriff has requested $102.8 million to run his department for 1988-89. Hickey wants to shave $12.6 million from that figure, offering Duffy $90.2 million.

Supervisor Brian Bilbray said the board realizes that more emergency operators are needed, but he maintained that the county does not have the money to hire the 33 dispatchers Duffy wants.

“It obviously should be a high priority, but we’re going to have deficiencies that are basically unacceptable to everyone,” Bilbray said. “I don’t think anybody is getting everything.”